Photo by Jacalyn Beales on Unsplash
Kiryl Ivanchenko knew it was wrong. He knew, for his first day on the job, a mistake of this order was grounds for something far more severe than dismissal. Still he produced the blue eraser-less pencil he’d got while putt-putting with his daughters in Cicero from the stiffly pressed uniform bottoms he wore, black wool slacks that seemed to shimmer when the light hit just right. He stopped in front of the painting, one he’d failed to notice in all his previous rounds, because he knew it had to change.
The painting was a portrait—three child-like figures in a v-formation, shown only from the sternum up. Each of the children had a different colored torso, half-pill shaped, from which a slender straw of a neck extended, each head rounder than the last. What struck Kiryl, what caused the measured slap of his loafer heels against the cold white marble to stop, is that none of the children had faces: no noses or mouths or ears. Certainly no eyes. This oddity terrified Kiryl, and in fact, standing there in the closed museum, he felt a sort to duty to change it, if only to quell the nausea climbing ladder rungs toward his mouth.
The regular lights were out, leaving what was normally a gallery warmed by the pervasive butter glow of incandescence to shadows stabbed red by the intermittent exit signs scattered throughout.
Kiryl pulled at the collar of his black blazer, which was cut in blocks and bunched at the scruff of his neck. In stitched red letters, SECURITY emblazoned his breast pocket, with a crest showing an eagle and sword just below. In the mirror that morning, Kiryl felt he was climbing into his old Army coat, though he couldn’t help but think the bird on the blazer looked more pigeon than eagle. Then again, so did he. The tall, rippling shoulders he’d brought home from the military a decade ago had devolved into taffy muscles. His cheeks were gaunt, slipping into meth-hungered at times, a thin greying skin stretched over the hard shapes in his face. He blamed it on Yana, who, as he claimed, slowly whittled him down such that his friends called him scarecrow to his face. Though if Kiryl thought about Yana for any amount of time, he knew their destruction was his doing.
Did he know that the Institute had just forked out three quarters of a million for the three-child portrait he stared at—the sole product of an Argentine modernist whose life had been cut short after jumping into the Rio de la Plata and getting hit by a tugboat? He did not. Kiryl simply drew circles the size of dimes for eyes, bolded three separate pairs of black pupils, careful not to puncture the canvas. When he stepped back to review his work, he noted that of the six eyes rendered, the two given to the child on the right revealed a particularly cagey gaze. Nothing a nose wouldn’t fix. So, each child received a nose—long and phallic—a vienna sausage hanging from the center of each round face down near to the chin. With this, the trio looked more bizarre than before, but only because they were without mouths to yell and ears to hear. That, Kiryl knew, would give them life. He could name them and imagine their hobbies with such features.
The child on the left received a bow mouth with lips pulled taut and conch shells for ears. The middle’s mouth resembled a thin strip of linguine, flat beneath its nose, with ears that stuck out like a chimp’s. On the right, the child was given a dark black mouth that seemed to scream in warning, as another security guard on duty that night marched into the room right then.
What the hell are you doing? the guard said. Kiryl did not reply. He turned on the smooth heel of his loafer to find a squat man with a toilet seat of white hair rimming the sides of his head. He was dressed the same as Kiryl only everything was too small: the jacket buttons about to burst at his gut, the cuffs of his pants flooded well above his white tube socks. It was a suit made for a boy scout, and Kiryl, despite the menace with which the little guard swung his flashlight, couldn’t help but laugh.
He laughed so hard he sent his diaphragm to spasms, wrenching at such a force that he wheezed, threw his hands to his knees to catch himself. He never saw Little Guard charge, only heard his chippy little steps hitting stone before the bird-beak crunch of flashlight meeting his occipital bones sent his world to the impossibly black.
Kiryl awoke in a neck brace that kept him one degree past comfort. When he went to wipe the unconsciousness from his eyes, first with his right hand and then with the left, he became aware that he was cuffed to a hospital bed on which he sat in a human half fold. Straight ahead a slick man with skin the color of pennies sat with one leg draped over the other. The man wore a navy pinstripe polo and linen pants the color of limes, both cut smartly to conform to his slender frame and contrast against the sterility behind him. White walls the color of dream teeth, cold metal fixtures, a single window on whose reflection Kiryl saw his battered self.
The man pointed a skinny finger over his shoulder without turning.
They’re watching us, he said, his accent faint but present. But don’t worry. I wouldn’t let them take you anywhere until I spoke to you first. Kiryl made to respond but an accordion of throat sounds were all that left his mouth. The man rose from his chair, walked the five feet over to the foot of the bed, where he tapped his hand lightly on Kiryl’s shinbone.
Relax, he said. Don’t strain yourself. The man came around of side of the bed to sit in the space next to Kiryl’s hip. He smelled of bergamot and mint tea. His hair was black and long enough that he could wear it slicked straight back with some sort of pomade that glimmered under the lights.
I am Rosario, the man said to Kiryl and offered his hand. Kiryl moved to shake the delicate pink fingers but the chain around his wrist prevented him. Rosario chuckled softly, a laugh like chewy caramel.
I forgot, he said, tipping a fake cap. Forgive me. Kiryl nodded, the air in his throat starting to catch.
I have come here because I heard that you desecrated my brother Antonio’s only work. As you know, Antonio is dead now, so I maintain his estate on his behalf. You follow?
I do, Kiryl croaked. Rosario’s eyebrows raised. He laughed something more juvenile than before, more akin to bike gears spinning.
They told me you wouldn’t speak for days, but I told them: ‘No, not this one.’ I had a feeling about you. Kiryl went warm at the words but stayed quiet.
So I have come here to ask you a question, one to decide your fate. Back there, and Rosario pointed behind him again, they want to toss you in jail. And if I’m honest, Ivanchenko, if you disappoint me, I will let them. I don’t have a problem with letting the dogs eat you from the guts on out if that’s what it means. You defaced my brother’s life, you know? That painting is the last breath of Antonio I have. Rosario made a sign of the cross over himself. Kiryl cleared his throat, but Rosario, still seated next to him, pushed a finger to his lips. It tasted of expensive smoke.
No, no, he said. I’m not finished.
Rosario rose then from the hospital bed and walked back to the metal folding chair just past Kiryl’s feet, where he rested his hands on the seatback.
I choose what happens to you, Rosario said, pointing a finger to his heart. I choose what they can or can’t do to you. It’s my brother’s work, you see?
Kiryl didn’t but he nodded his head anyway. If he was going to live past this bed he was strapped to, he needed to be agreeable.
I do, he said again.
Good, good, Rosario said, nodding. So here is my question: why did you draw on my brother’s painting?
Kiryl looked down to the thin blue blanket in his lap, as far as the neck brace would let him. What ran through his head in those moments? He tried to recall.
Yana. Yana was his quick answer, his gut answer, the reason why he only saw his daughters twice a month answer. Yana with blond hair cut like a wolf around her face. Yana who’d divorced him after he’d quit the last job, the one at the bank, because the boss kept calling him Putin even though he was Ukrainian. Yana who scrapped to get by despite his lack. Yana who thought Chicago might be just the fresh chance they needed to get past what happened to him in the army.
Rosario clapped his hands emphatically.
I need answers, pendejo, he said.
Kiryl looked to Rosario, his goatee trimmed as if with a ruler. A hurt circled in his still gaze like water at the drain, a hurt that searched for his brother.
It wasn’t Yana.
He saw Rosario’s hurt would circle and circle never to empty fully. Nothing would pass the blockade of sudden disappearance. It was his hurt, Kiryl’s hurt, fermenting over the old questions that could not be answered. How, at twenty-two, when faced with battle, had he so easily pulled the trigger of his Kalashnikov? Why did those three boys in their long black tunics have to run so close to the enemy? As one fell, and the other two held their brother as blood striped their hands, did they decide right then to chase Kiryl? Is that why he drew them on the painting—in hopes that they would stop? In hopes that giving them a home would cease their soprano cries, which streaked his memory with black smudges? Yana could never change this in him.
I drew on it because I only know to break, Kiryl said. Bile filled his mouth, but he gulped its fire back down as a penance.
Rosario fell to his knees at these words. His deep howl vibrated the stillness.
Yes, Ivanchenko, he said through trembling lips, the tears forming on his long lashes. You get me. You get that Antonio never jumped in the river; I pushed him. I pushed him as a prank as he marveled at how the sun struck dips in the muddy water. And now—now he is dead.
J. Dominic Patacsil is a fiction writer hailing from Indiana. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. His published work can be found at www.jdpatacsil.wixsite.com/fiction.